Hacking Hardware r4isdhc.hk 2024+ carts now use R4DS Pro hardware

[SylverReZ]

r4isdhc.hk carts marked with the year 2024, has replaced its old Ace3DS+ PCBs with ones of the R4DS Pro, they can be identified by a gold solder mask if you look on the cartridge's contacts. These DO NOT apparently work with a DSi or 3DS, but rather, for DS phat and lite models only. You will need to hack your console for it to be recognized making it an unreliable choice for those who want to play games on a stock console.

The R4DS Pro hardware supports the BL2CK kernel, which has good game compatibility.

Here are a number of ways to identify this type of cart:
- Gold solder mask.
- Misspelling of "Revolution for DS" on the cart's label - "Revoloution for DS".

For the time being, its best to buy either an Ace3DS+, Ace3DS X, or the r4isdhc.com.cn carts.

Cart images:

PCB images (provided by "deletecat"):

 

[SylverReZ]

Something else I wanna mention. Depending on where you buy it from, you may or may not get a bricked cart. So proceed with caution at all costs.

 

[stl25]

I have been fortunate. I have bought a few from Aliexpress and they work great in my hacked DSi. I am not as familiar with the compatability of the BL2CK kernel, and if your system is not hacked as @SylverReZ mentioned there are better options for sure. My only quip with Ace3DS carts is that NAND based saving games such as Warioware DIY and Jam with the band do not work with the card. But I guess you could just boot into TWiLight Menu++ to play those titles

 

[SylverReZ]

I have been fortunate. I have bought a few from Aliexpress and they work great in my hacked DSi. I am not as familiar with the compatability of the BL2CK kernel, and if your system is not hacked as @SylverReZ mentioned there are better options for sure. My only quip with Ace3DS carts is that NAND based saving games such as Warioware DIY and Jam with the band do not work with the card. But I guess you could just boot into TWiLight Menu++ to play those titles

Have you tried using other kernels? - Twilight Menu++ or RGFan's YSMenu?

 

[stl25]

Have you tried using other kernels? - Twilight Menu++ or RGFan's YSMenu?

TWiLight Menu++ will boot into the game, although I have not put any substantial time into the game to this point. Can the Ace3DS+ run YSMenu? I thought YSMenu would brick the Ace3ds. I know YSMenu will brick the R4DS Pro cards. YSMenu works with those games on DSTT and its clones.

 

[SylverReZ]

Can the Ace3DS+ run YSMenu?

No. Only the original Ace3DS from 2011, which is a DSTT(i) clone, long before the existence of the '+' model.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Interesting. I recently got a "Gold Pro" variant that's sorta related to this one. It's not a hk version though. Won't be disassembling it since mine is held in with a screw under the label and it's not worth destroying the nice golden label just to get a look.

Mine is much like the other R4iSDHC clones that use the Demon DLDI driver and are ntrboot compatible. (supposedly, I'm able to reflash stuff to it with the flash restore option at least so I can do things like modify the icon it uses and such).

I tested and it's not compatible with the BL2CK kernel. You can use the timebomb patched version of the "Demon" 1.85b kernel however.

Courtasy of lifehackerhansol pointing this out to me. This prepatched kernel works on this cart though:

https://flashcard-archive.ds-homebrew.com/r4i-sdhc.com/old/r4i-sdhc.com_DEMON_1.85b-notimebomb.zip

So if you have the Gold varient that is the r4isdhc.com variant it likely uses the "demon" dldi/kernel so that prepatched one with no time bomb should work on it.

I've confirmed the timebomb in the 2024 cart is sometime after September of 2024. At least if you use the R4i-V4-0b-English zip that's currently available for this cart.

I got this card off Wal-Mart's website by the way. Yep...you can get them from Wal-Mart though...a bit through their online market place atleast and I paid for mine using a Wal-Mart gift card I got for Christmas.

Currently it appears the new DSi NTRBOOT installer doesn't work correctly with mine but hopefully someone will iron that out at some point. This card should in theory work for that once that's sorted.



Until TWL ntroboot is sorted out for this card I have for now just flashed a custom icon to it. This is what it currently looks like on my console. Of coarse once I did this it will only boot on modded consoles but since all mine are modded...it's not really a problem.



I attached that ZIP containing the banner binary. Assuming your cart has the bomberman game as the spoofed game the banner should be located at offset 0x1A6600 in your flash dump. You can insert this one here if you want to use it.

 

[SylverReZ]

Won't be disassembling it since mine is held in with a screw under the label and it's not worth destroying the nice golden label just to get a look.

Thought it would easily come apart by pulling the front off with your fingernail. So, thats new.

I got this card off Wal-Mart's website by the way. Yep...you can get them from Wal-Mart though...a bit through their online market place atleast and I paid for mine using a Wal-Mart gift card I got for Christmas.

Anybody can sell on Wal-Mart's website, surprised that Nintendo haven't gotten to those Pokemen bootlegs yet. (yes, that typo was intentional)

Currently it appears the new DSi NTRBOOT installer doesn't work correctly with mine but hopefully someone will iron that out at some point. This card should in theory work for that once that's sorted.

Could be just that they changed the flash chips around, so that the ID doesn't match to what the ntrboot installer expects. Maybe once somebody gets their hands on one, then they can take a look. Mine's from 2022 and seems to be working fine.

I've confirmed the timebomb in the 2024 cart is sometime after September of 2024. At least if you use the R4i-V4-0b-English zip that's currently available for this cart.

These Gold Pro/Dual-Core carts are strange. They apparently do not work with the R4i-3DS stock kernel due to how it identifies what is a clone and what isn't an clone. There are a section of bytes different to the original dump that do not match (probably that's how it recognises it as a clone), but the rest remains the same. Bomberman Land icon still the same too, none of that Atlantis SquarePantis crap.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Yeah. I was able to lift up the edges of the cart to take a peek under the shell and confirmed there is a screw in the center down near the bottom of the label so it's definitely held together with screw. The screw location is very similar to the screw location on the og R4 shell. (just with the screw coming in from the label side instead of the backside)

Oh so does the R4iSDHC ntrboot installer have different code for different version of the R4iSDHC? So yeah perhaps it's just misidentifying it then? It drops the GCD image at 0x0 in the flash dump...but I think this is incorrect? because that's not how the bomber man rom was setup in the flash image.

Oddly enough though if I go into the unlaunch menu the cart shows up like this:


As a result I can't boot it directly with Unlaunch.

NTR_Launcher shows header CRC error too so likely same issue. GM9i was able to rom dump it correctly though...so not sure what's going on there.

 

[JORGETECH]

Interesting. I recently got a "Gold Pro" variant that's sorta related to this one. It's not a hk version though. Won't be disassembling it since mine is held in with a screw under the label and it's not worth destroying the nice golden label just to get a look.

Mine is much like the other R4iSDHC clones that use the Demon DLDI driver and are ntrboot compatible. (supposedly, I'm able to reflash stuff to it with the flash restore option at least so I can do things like modify the icon it uses and such).

I tested and it's not compatible with the BL2CK kernel. You can use the timebomb patched version of the "Demon" 1.85b kernel however.

Courtasy of lifehackerhansol pointing this out to me. This prepatched kernel works on this cart though:

https://flashcard-archive.ds-homebrew.com/r4i-sdhc.com/old/r4i-sdhc.com_DEMON_1.85b-notimebomb.zip

So if you have the Gold varient that is the r4isdhc.com variant it likely uses the "demon" dldi/kernel so that prepatched one with no time bomb should work on it.

I've confirmed the timebomb in the 2024 cart is sometime after September of 2024. At least if you use the R4i-V4-0b-English zip that's currently available for this cart.

I got this card off Wal-Mart's website by the way. Yep...you can get them from Wal-Mart though...a bit through their online market place atleast and I paid for mine using a Wal-Mart gift card I got for Christmas.

Currently it appears the new DSi NTRBOOT installer doesn't work correctly with mine but hopefully someone will iron that out at some point. This card should in theory work for that once that's sorted.

View attachment 413049View attachment 413050

Until TWL ntroboot is sorted out for this card I have for now just flashed a custom icon to it. This is what it currently looks like on my console. Of coarse once I did this it will only boot on modded consoles but since all mine are modded...it's not really a problem.

View attachment 413052

I attached that ZIP containing the banner binary. Assuming your cart has the bomberman game as the spoofed game the banner should be located at offset 0x1A6600 in your flash dump. You can insert this one here if you want to use it.

Thanks for sharing the patched "Demon" kernel without timebomb. It actually works in my "www.r4isdhc.com" 2021 Dual-Core silver cart! I was looking for a patched stock kernel since it has RTS capabilities (and some people prefer it's interface but I also like YSMenu).

Is there any information on how it was patched to remove the timebomb? I just ask this out of curiosity.

 

[SylverReZ]

Is there any information on how it was patched to remove the timebomb? I just ask this out of curiosity.

https://kynex.ovh/patching-the-timebomb-in-an-r4-flashcart.html

This person, kynex7510, was responsible for cracking the timebomb in the kernel. They even made a tool to crack the timebomb.

https://github.com/kynex7510

Post automatically merged: Jan 11, 2024

As a result I can't boot it directly with Unlaunch.

NTR_Launcher shows header CRC error too so likely same issue. GM9i was able to rom dump it correctly though...so not sure what's going on there.

Me neither. It only works if you run it from the system menu.

 

[JORGETECH]

https://kynex.ovh/patching-the-timebomb-in-an-r4-flashcart.html

This person, kynex7510, was responsible for cracking the timebomb in the kernel. They even made a tool to crack the timebomb.

https://github.com/kynex7510

Thanks for sharing! I must have been out of the loop on flashcart stuff for a while since I didn't know anything about this.

 

[stl25]

I have the 2024 r4isdhc.hk and a few other R4DS Pro clone cards. If anyone else has any of these carts, have you been able to run TWiLight Menu successfully? I have run into DLDI issues launching into TWiLight Menu (can launch but unable to change and save settings) and when loading games it will only launch the first game. When selecting any other game after loading the initial game, results in the first game loading instead of the selected game.

 

[cehenriquesimoes]

você teria o kernel desse R4 "Revoloution"? comprei desse sem querer e não acho o kernel dele

 

[FR0ZN]

I see a lot of those 3 cards on AliExpress - white, silver, gold, pro, RTS, update, revolution, 2022, 2023, 2024 - wth man?
Are those basically all the same hardware/software wise? Does it matter which one I buy?
I'm wondering what's the best NDS card in this day and age.

 

[SylverReZ]

do you have the kernel for this R4 "Revoloution"? i bought it accidentally and i can't find its kernel

Forum speaks in English only.

https://flashcard-archive.ds-homebrew.com/r4dspro.com/BL2CK_1.31.0_r4dspro.com.zip
or use this https://wiki.ds-homebrew.com/twilightmenu/installing-flashcard

 

[The Catboy]

These cheap carts using the same hardware isn’t a new practice
https://gbatemp.net/threads/proof-t...hc-carts-are-literally-the-same-carts.514539/

 

[FR0ZN]

Does the software dictate the features?
Is Wood Kernel = Wood Kernel?
Or is the hardware responsible for any of these features like RTS?

 

[SylverReZ]

Does the software dictate the features?
Is Wood Kernel = Wood Kernel?
Or is the hardware responsible for any of these features like RTS?

RTS is dependable on the kernel. I don't believe Wood R4 uses RTS features?

These cheap carts using the same hardware isn’t a new practice
https://gbatemp.net/threads/proof-t...hc-carts-are-literally-the-same-carts.514539/

They've always relied on the same hardware for most of their carts, so it doesn't surprise me.

 

[Technicmaster0]

RTS is dependable on the kernel. I don't believe Wood R4 uses RTS features?

Official wood has RTS with r4ids.cn or r4idsn.com. But non of the unofficial wood clones have RTS.